Connect/Communicating Directly with Users
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Communicating with Users
Facebook currently supports multiple ways for your application to communicate directly with your users.
If a user grants the relevant permission / becomes a fan of your application’s profile, you can:
- Post to user’s streams and updates to their Facebook Inbox
- Send users email to their registered email address
- Send SMS messages to their registered phone number
- Send application-to-user notifications (limited)
Note: You cannot directly access the user’s email address or phone number, but you can use the features listed below to message them. When you use these features, messages will be sent directly to the user’s most current email address / phone number.
Posting to Stream / Updates via Facebook Pages
Your application comes with a Facebook Page. Any Facebook Pages can post information to the Streams of all of their fans as well as post Updates to a Fan’s Inbox.
In order for you to do this, users must first become a fan of your page – this does not happen automatically when they start using your application. You can use the Facebook Fan Box within your application to prompt this.
For more information see http://www.facebook.com/advertising/?pages.
Sending Email
To send a user email, you first need the email extended permission. You can request extended permissions directly from your website or application. And you can determine at any time whether a user has granted the permission.
To email users who have granted the permission, you can:
- Send email directly to the
proxied_emailfield (accessible via users.getInfo, see above). That is a fully functional email address and will redirect messages to the user’s currently registered email address. This is a field that you can store permanently for the user. - Call the method notifications.sendEmail.
SMS
To send an SMS, you first need the {c|sms}} extended permission. You can request extended permissions directly from your website or application. And you can determine at any time whether a user has granted the permission.
To send SMS to users who have granted the permission, you can call the method sms.send.
See also Facebook Platform for Mobile: SMS.
App to User Notifications
Once a user has added an application or connected to your website, you can send application-to-user notifications to them at any time. These notifications appear on the Notifications tab in the Facebook Inbox, and are highlighted by a red bubble in the bottom of the user's screen. Please note you can send up to 7 notifications per week. If for some reason, users were to report these as spam, your rate may be limited.
Use the method notifications.send with the type app_to_user.
Read the policies and guidelines for app to user notifications.
